Sunday, May 13, 2012

"Mad Men," Episode 9, "Dark Shadows"

The
increasing openness of American society in the 1960s is the main theme of “Dark
Shadows,” as the growing presence of Jewish Americans takes center stage. The episode reveals that the traditional
Protestant establishment is declining in power as the descendants of the
turn-of-the-century Ellis Island immigration claim a larger role in Sterling
Cooper as well as the nation as a whole.

Nothing
demonstrates this dynamic more clearly than Roger Sterling’s efforts to woo
Manischewitz, a Jewish winemaker that is aiming to reach out to a non-Jewish
clientele, or as Sterling calls them, “normal people.” During dinner, the
owner’s son reveals that his father doesn’t like yachts because the last time
he was on a boat he was in “steerage,” a reference to the fact that he came to
the U.S. on a ship from Eastern Europe and/or the Russian Empire. This was a common experience for Jewish
immigrants and other newcomers to America, as many came to the United States
through Ellis Island between 1882 and 1924.

Many
white-collar industries, such as the financial world, were largely closed to
Jews because of the country club prejudice espoused by Sterling throughout the
episode. As a result, the
first-generation of Jews often had to go into business by themselves or with
family members. Educational doors were
often closed as well, as Ivy League universities created quotas to limit the
number of Jews attending their institutions.

After the
unifying experience of World War II, with many immigrants and their children
serving abroad or sacrificing at home as part of the national effort to defeat
the Axis powers, anti-Semitism began to diminish. In 1946, polls conducted by the American
Jewish Committee revealed that 64 percent of people had heard negative talk
about Jews in the previous six months.
By 1959, only 12 percent had heard such remarks (Dinnerstein, Anti-Semitism in America, p. 151). The academic quotas gradually faded away and
major firms opened their doors to a new generation during the postwar period. In
“Man Men,” Sterling Cooper is clearly late to the party, only hiring Michael
Ginsberg in 1966. Even Sterling noted in
a previous episode that most firms already hired Jews. In a New
York Times piece written before the debut of the second season, creator Matt
Weiner foreshadowed the show’s evolution, saying, “The story to me is about the
onset of a subversive ethnic point of view that has not poked through to
Sterling Cooper. They’re dinosaurs.”(NYT, June 22, 2008)

Indeed,
“Mad Men” has now reached this stage, as Don Draper now must compete with the
upstart Ginsberg, whom the firm wouldn’t have hired a decade earlier. Draper is clearly threatened by his younger
colleague’s talent, to the point of not showing Ginsberg’s idea to a client so
as to ensure they will take his own.
When he confronts Don about this omission, Ginsberg says, “I feel bad
for you.” Though Don responds that “I
don’t think about you at all,” he is either lying to Ginsberg or to himself.

The new
generation of Jewish Americans was by no means homogenous. Some, like Roger’s soon-to-be-ex-wife, Jane
Siegel, were very assimilated. Others,
like Ginsberg, who was adopted by a traditional Jewish father, appear closer to
the immigrant experience. Some have
noted that Weiner is portraying Ginsberg as an almost Woody Allen-like
stereotype (Allen’s career was just beginning to take off in the mid-60s).

One shouldn’t
exaggerate the openness of 1966. The
nation had only eliminated Jim Crow a year earlier with the passage of the Voting Rights Act and
blacks, as well as women, hardly faced an even playing field in the workplace.
Still, as Roger and Don are discovering, it is a greater challenge to be
successful when institutions don’t exclude large pools of talented people.